The regulator updates its “My mobile network” site to find out everything about network coverage and quality of service. The opportunity to take stock of the progress of the New Deal and the deployment of 5G in the first quarter.
The deployment of mobile networks continues in France, Arcep counts nearly 52,000 sites equipped with 5G in mainland France including 29,900 sites in the 3.5 GHz band as of March 31, 2024. This week, the regulator revealed the quarterly data of 4G and 5G mobile coverage in mainland France and overseas in the 1st quarter.
At the top of the ranking for all frequencies, Free now has 19,093 sites open commercially compared to 12,089 for Bouygues Telecom, 11,495 for SFR and 9,517 for Orange. The historic operator stands out on the 3.5 GHz band with 9,767 active sites, and is ahead of SFR (7,955), Bouygues Telecom (6,704) and Free Mobile (5,771).
Regarding the generalization of 4G, Arcep has updated its New Mobile Deal monitoring page which presents information relating to the switchover of mobile sites to 4G, the coverage of transport routes and the progress of the “targeted coverage” system, with as of March 31, 2024, 2,956 sites in service.
This quarter, the Authority also enhanced the monitoring of deployments under the “fixed 4G extension” system. As of March 31, 2024, Orange and SFR have put 673 fixed 4G sites into service.
This is also an opportunity to benefit from a new version of the official My mobile network map with updated maps and 4G coverage rates in mainland France and overseas.
The location of 5G sites opened commercially according to the frequencies deployed in mainland France and overseas (in Reunion, Guyana, Saint-Barthélemy and Saint-Martin), has also been updated. Crowdsourcing data from third parties, in particular those produced by the local authority of Corsica via its Mi Senti application, are now viewable.
It is also interesting to look at the new mapping of 240 Mb/s sites by operator. “This is a theoretical maximum flow rate, linked to the capacity installed on each site. The information is provided by the operators, or reduced when it is missing or incomplete: a site is included in the “240 Mbit/s” category as soon as the operator has activated at least two 4G frequency bands on a given site (“4G+”). The actual throughput may depend on many parameters, such as the distance from the antenna or the simultaneous number of users,” specifies Arcep.
This article was reprinted on the Univers FreeBox website
